a disregard for science.nietzsche made great effort to study the most modern scientific theories of his day... but tarkovsky's attitude towards science (as you can guess from the comments of his alter-ego, the writer, in stalker) was that of total disinterest and even revulsion. my guess it had in part to do with science being presented in the driest and most dogmatic manner possible in the soviet time, and would beat out of you whatever enthusiasm or interest you may have potential had for it. to me, any decent philosophical worldview must have a relationship with science... one's own psychology and subjectivity must be married with the more objective and universal theories about the world... otherwise your worldview is liable to be too solipsistic, and often too distanced from non-human issues and phenomena. that's only my take on it.

here is one quote. I don't have his book, but have read a couple chapters of it, one of which he talks to some length on the differences between the two methods of understanding. I don't recall picking up on him dismissing science entirely, but I need to find and read the whole chapter again.

Andrei Tarkovsky wrote:

The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise. Artistic creation demands of the artist that he 'perish utterly', in the full, tragic sense of those words. And so, if art carries within it a hieroglyphic of absolute truth, this will always be an image of the world, made manifest in the work once and for all time. And if cold, positivistic, scientific cognition of the world is like the ascent of an unending staircase, its artistic counterpoint suggests an endless system of spheres, each one perfect and contained within itself. One may complement or contradict another, but in no circumstances can they cancel each other out; on the contrary, they enrich one another, and accumulate to form an all-embracing sphere that grows out into infinity...

i have read the book... he never addresses science in any light, it just isn't ever part of his thought at all. (same with politics, btw, thought that is much more understandable and relateable for me)well, i may be wrong, of course. i know he had encyclopedic knowledge about every facet of filmmaking techniques, for example, but never wanted to talk about it outside of with technicians. maybe he was the same with science - it did inform his worldview in some shape or form, he just didn't want to talk about it (which would be silly, though, which is why i don't think it is so).

I watched Stalker last night, my first Tarkovsky. I think the shot that stood out to me the most was when they're in the room with the telephone. We only see them through a doorway, about a third of the screen at most, pacing in and out of view and discussing all these philosophical things. The rest of the shot - the majority of it - is a dirty, blank white wall, surrounding them, stark and uncaring of their incredible pain and philosophical turmoil. That one shot totally seems to sum up the universe and our self-absorbed, insignificant place in it.

a most rare movie is finally available on youtube... it's in three parts, though still incomplete.unfortunately it is very out-of-synch, by half a minute or so... and i can't speak for the quality of subtitles yet, though i noticed they're impossible to read half the time. i guess this is only for the hardcore fans...

also, from the horse's mouth...Q: What is your opinion of men like Galileo and Einstein?

Just saw that post. Dang, going to set aside some time tonight to watch it. Can't wait to get my homework out of the way.

RYM review of Andrei Rublev by the same guy who did that one Stalker review:

A stoic, medieval, Russian, Christian iconographer who never paints anything but stumbles over hedonists constantly kills some guy in the corner of a scene that can be best described as "did he just kill a guy?" and renounces painting, later decides to paint again after watching some annoying adolescent pull a fast one on a bunch of idiots in constructing a massive bell through sheer force of naivete. Pretty sure 2001 ripped this off, somehow.

but it does have gems such as this under it...Yes, I totally get the comparison to "2001," as both films are boring, self-absorbed attempts to appear "important." They left me craving a good Warner Brothers film from the 30s or 40s...

i see he talks of images of nature as comforting, but doesn't attempt to explain why or how... this is interesting for me partly because it is related to the idea of the universal unconscious... the idea that all of us find comfort (or whatever other response) in certain images (and here i draw the same distinction tarkovsky also insisted upon, the distinction between "artistic image" and "symbolic image", as one is intuitive/associative, and the other is linear and intellectual)... for example, i've always found the sight of a forest, both from the outside and especially from inside, particularly calming, and it seems to me that a lot, or even most, people do so, as well... and i have a hypothesis that it is rooted in our past, when our ancestors used to live in trees and in forests, and found them to be a place of comfort and protection, full of food, and other positive associations. (same with the sound of birds singing, with the sound of water, and so on, that all of us find pleasing). so, the fact that we find these same images comforting (i mean tarkovsky's audience, in this case, for example) is proof of our common ancestry, the very same way our morphological features are. (and this extends beyond humans and to other primates and other mammals and so on, and the farther taxonomically we go the fewer images we interpret similarly, is my guess). anyway, that's my perhaps rather clumsy attempt to link evolutionary biology with psychology and aesthetics (though i think as far as genetics is concerned, such hypotheses are relegated to the area of memetics), and i'm guessing tarkovsky would have rejected this kind of thinking outright (as he seemed to reject both jung's ideas, and science and any mechanistic views of the world in general)

ps: i remember reading someone's (forget whose) account about tarkovsky playing with coins, water and other things that made sounds he liked, for hours and hours, like a child...

Criterion is rereleasing Solaris in BluRay and on DVD to have improved audio and video quality as well as to correct some mistake in the old version where some scene was supposed to be tinted blue or wasn't supposed to be tinted blue or something. Some controversy over whether a certain scene is supposed to be a memory or on a screen.

DigitalDreamDoor Forum is one part of a music and movie list website whose owner has given its visitors
the privilege to discuss music and movies, and has no control and cannot in any way be held liable over
how, or by whom this board is used. If you read or see anything inappropriate that has been posted,
contact webmaster@digitaldreamdoor.com. Comments in the forum are reviewed before list updates.
Topics include rock music, metal, rap, hip-hop, blues, jazz, songs, albums, guitar, drums, musicians...